Trip-logos.

This is just for fun, to see what names people would give triplet girls?

A: The act of naming is an act of horrendous violence. By giving something a “name,” we must necessarily open it to essentialization. Ultimately, a name acts to remove any immanent Being from something, and relate it to a signifier that relates to an ultimately unapproachable signified. In this light, we can see the story of Adam naming the animals in the Hebrew Bereshit as representing the proprietary nature of human language. The first act that separates humanity from the natural world in the Judeo-Christian tradition is the violence of imposing a name/identity on the world. The initial logos is a name.

I am, however, intrigued that your hypothetical involves triplets. On the one hand, this could be an apt—if objectifying—analogy to the function of language itself. Three identical (or nearly so) children all bear different names; individual signifiers referring to “identical” objects of signification. The confusion (perhaps ripe for a ‘90s family sitcom) highlights the inevitable gaps, confusions, and ambiguities that can arise.

Additionally, by gendering these triplets “girls,” you place them in a structurally subordinate position in our patriarchal society. Are you perhaps under the impression that “girls” can be named, while other groups have the power to name? I think so. Please read Judith Butler before you begin to think about having any children.

Ultimately, I think that I would wait until the girls had finished reading Of Grammatology (perhaps seven or eight), and allow them to name themselves. Afterwards, they would name me, and ritually sacrifice me as an effigy of the dominant discourse.